Short-range wireless beacon transmitter devices are used at various sites, such as shops, restaurants, cultural venues and sport arenas, to attract attention from nearby users of beacon receiver devices in the form of mobile communication devices, such as mobile terminals like smartphones or tablets. The abbreviated notion mobile devices will be used herein when referring to such mobile communication devices. While the beacon receiver devices by nature are mobile, the beacon transmitter devices may be either stationary in the sense that they are installed at fixed locations, or they too may be mobile as will be described in more detail later.
For instance, the iBeacon technology from Apple allows for mobile devices to understand their location on a micro-local scale, and also allows delivery of hyper-contextual content to the users of mobile devices based on their current location. The iBeacon technology is based on the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) standard, and more particularly on Generic Access Profile (GAP) advertising packets. There are several other kinds of short-range wireless beacon technologies, for instance AltBeacon, URIBeacon and Eddystone, which are also based on BLE and GAP.
In a basic short-range wireless beacon communication system based on the BLE standard, a beacon transmitter device repeatedly broadcasts a short-range wireless beacon advertisement signal in a 31-byte GAP BLE packet. The beacon advertisement signal contains a 128-bit universally unique identifier, UUID. The beacon advertisement signal may also include a 16-bit major portion and a 16-bit minor portion. The beacon signal identifies a beacon region associated with the beacon transmitter device. Whereas, as is commonly known, a geographical region is an area defined by a circle of a specified radius around a known point on the Earth's surface, a beacon region is in contrast an area defined by a mobile device's proximity to one or more beacon transmitter devices.
In some implementations, the beacon region is represented by the UUID, the major portion and the minor portion in the beacon advertisement signal. In other implementations, the beacon region is represented by the UUID and the major or minor portion in the beacon signal. In still other implementations, the beacon region is represented by the UUID alone.
In some installations, additional beacon transmitter devices may also repeatedly broadcast a short-range wireless beacon signal for the same beacon region as a first beacon transmitter device, using a beacon advertisement signal having the same content.
To be able to receive the short-range wireless beacon signal provided that they are within range of a beacon transmitter device, each mobile device is provided with an application program, app, which is configured to detect and react on short-range wireless beacon signals, such as the aforementioned beacon advertisement signal, with support from the underlying operating system. In one known beacon technology, the apps in mobile devices can detect and react on beacons in two ways, monitoring and ranging. Monitoring enables the app to detect movement in and out of the beacon region (i.e., whether the mobile device is within or outside of the range of any of the beacon transmitter devices with which the beacon region is associated). Hence, monitoring allows the app to scan for beacon regions. Ranging is more granular and provides a list of beacon transmitter devices in range, together with their respective received signal strength, which may be used to estimate a distance to each of them. Hence, ranging allows the app to detect and react on individual beacon transmitter devices in a beacon region.
These apps may be handled by the operating system of the mobile device in different modes. The most prominent mode is the active mode, in which the app executes in the foreground and is typically capable of interacting with the user of the mobile device and also to communicate with an external device such as a server via the short-range wireless beacon interface and/or another communication interface. As regards short-range wireless beacon communication, ranging only works when the app is in active mode.
When a mobile device receives the beacon advertisement signal, the app in the mobile device may detect that it has entered the beacon region from the UUID (and the major/minor as the case may be) contained in the beacon advertisement signal, and react as appropriate in some way which is beneficial to the user and/or the host of the beacon transmitter device and which often involves interaction between the app in the mobile device and a service provider over a broadband communication network. A system server may also be included in some implementations.
Examples of such beneficial use include, without limitation, determining a current approximate position of the mobile device by retrieving a predefined position of the beacon transmitter device from the service provider or by cross reference with local lookup data, or retrieving content from the service provider.
A mobile device where the app is in active mode is referred to as an active mobile device in this document. An active mobile device may receive and react to additional transmissions of the beacon advertisement signal from the beacon transmitter device; this may be useful for instance if the content associated with the host of the beacon transmitter device is updated or changed.
Furthermore, an active mobile device may receive and react to beacon advertisement signals from other beacon transmitter devices nearby, provided of course that they are within range of the respective beacon transmitter device, or move closer to it. This is so irrespective of whether the different beacon transmitter devices advertise the same beacon region (i.e. contain the same UUID and major/minor in the respective beacon advertisement signals), or different beacon regions (provided that the app is configured to monitor for such different beacon regions). It is to be noticed that the same beacon region (e.g. same UUID) is very often used for different beacon transmitter devices hosted by the same host, such as within the same supermarket, arena, fastfood restaurant, etc.
The operating system of the mobile devices may also handle apps in apassive mode. A purpose of the passive mode is power preservation, since the mobile devices are typically powered by batteries and since it is a general technical ambition to maximize the operational time of a mobile device between successive charging sessions. In the passive mode, the app executes in the background or is only installed on the mobile device. Unlike ranging which only works when the app is in active mode, monitoring works when the app is in active mode as well as when the app is in passive mode.
Transitions between active mode and passive mode may be based on user interaction, user preference settings in the app or the operating system, or program logic in the app or the operating system.
A mobile device where the app is in passive mode is referred to as a passive mobile device in this document. In the passive mode, the app typically cannot interact with the user via the user interface, nor communicate with a server or another device—except for the following. Just like active mobile devices, a nearby passive mobile device may monitor for a beacon region and hence receive a short-range wireless beacon advertisement signal if it is within range of the beacon transmitter device in question. However, unlike active mobile devices, after a short beacon scanning period in the monitoring, during which the beacon transmitter device is discoverable and also communication with a server or another device is possible, and unless it switches to active mode, the passive mobile device will not be able to react to additional beacon advertisement signals for the same beacon region from the beacon transmitter device.
Instead, after the short beacon scanning period (which typically lasts for some seconds, such as about 10 seconds), the passive mobile device will be “ignorant” or “deaf to”, i.e. not react on, additional beacon advertisement signals for the same beacon region for as long as it stays in passive mode and continues to detect such beacon advertisement signals, for instance because it remains within range of the beacon transmitter device and continues to detect its beacon advertisement signal. Such a “deafened out” state will last for a certain time, which in a typical prior art implementation is at least 30 seconds to avoid false positives due to effects in the radio signal environment (e.g. multi-propagation delay). The “deafened out” state may however often last substantially longer than 30 seconds, sometimes as long as about 15 minutes depending on operational factors such as, for instance, battery level, power consumption or operating system scheduling in the passive mobile device. Only once the passive mobile device has not received the beacon advertisement signal, or any other beacon communication which advertises the same beacon region, for a certain time, such as 1-15 minutes, the passive mobile device will again be reactive to the beacon advertisement signal, or any other beacon communication which advertises the same beacon region.
The present inventors have identified challenges associated with passive mobile devices as referred to above.
It is a problem for the host of the beacon transmitter device, since it will prevent the host from advertising for new or updated content. It is also a problem to the passive mobile device, since it will be deprived of an opportunity to react on the beacon advertisement signal during the period when it is “deafened out”.
This also means that when there are several beacon transmitter devices in the beacon region, a passive mobile device will be locked to the beacon transmitter device which it first discovered in the beacon region for as long as it stays within range of that beacon transmitter device's beacon signal. This is, again, problematic both from the point of view of the passive mobile device itself and for the host of the beacon transmitter devices, for the reasons explained above. In addition to this, the host of the beacon transmitter devices will not be able to track the movement of the passive mobile device and broadcast an adapted service offer to the user of the passive mobile device as a result of the movement (such as, for instance, offering a first content when the user is in a first subarea where a first beacon transmitter device is located and a different, second content when the user is in a second subarea where a second beacon transmitter device is located).
Moreover, when the mobile device app uses beacon-based localization functionality for the purpose of determining the location of the user with a high degree of accuracy by means of triangulation based on several stationary beacon transmitter devices covering the same beacon region, for instance indoors, there might be a problem if the mobile device is in passive mode. A passive mobile device will not be able to update its estimated location caused by the movement, since the second beacon transmitter device will not be detected when the passive mobile device is still within range of the first beacon transmitter device.
In recent time, applications have been introduced which are based on mobile beacon transmitter devices rather than stationary. For instance, the present applicant has taken leadership in developing a new beacon-based technology which considerably facilitates for users of mobile devices which are proximate to each other to interact by, for instance, sharing content or conducting social media interaction.
The technology, which can be referred to as a “bubble” concept, is based on short-range wireless beacon broadcast messaging for establishing a dynamic, proximity-based network. Interaction between the users of the mobile devices in the network is supported by broadband network communication with a server. A short-range wireless beacon system based on mobile beacon transmitter devices is shown in FIG. 3A. While it can generally be used for various different purposes, the system in FIG. 3A is advantageously used for implementing the above-mentioned bubble concept. To this end, each mobile device A1, A2, A3, A4, P1 is provided with an app which (together with the operating system and hardware in the mobile device) is configured to handle transmission as well as reception of short-range wireless beacon signals. Hence, unlike a basic static beacon communication system, in the bubble system of FIG. 3A, each mobile device can act as a beacon transmitting device as well as a beacon receiving device. In FIG. 3A, the mobile device A1 is in active mode and repeatedly broadcasts its short-range wireless beacon advertisement signal BA, containing a 128-bit universally unique identifier UUID as well as a device identifier within the 32-bit major/minor portion of the beacon signal.
Other active mobile devices A2, A3, A4 within a proximity zone (range) of the mobile device A1 can receive the beacon advertisement signal BA, read the UUID and the device identifier, and as a result contact a system server SS over a broadband communication network (NW) 300. The app in the receiving mobile device may decide, for instance based on user interaction, user preference settings and/or program logic in the app, to join the bubble of the mobile device A1, wherein the system server SS will register the receiving mobile device as belonging to the bubble of the mobile device A1. Hence, the beacon advertisement signal BA from the mobile device A1 serves for announcing to the mobile devices A2, A3, A4 in the proximity of the mobile device A1 about the availability of a dynamic ad-hoc network PZ1 of beacon transmitter devices, i.e. the bubble which the short-range wireless beacon transmitter device A1 is a member of.
The users of the bubble members A1-A4 may then, for instance, share content or conduct social media interaction supported by the system server SS and/or a service provider SP over the broadband communication network 300.
There may also be passive mobile devices within the proximity zone of the active mobile device A1. This is seen for a passive mobile device P1 in FIG. 3A. The passive mobile device P1 will also receive the beacon signal BA as identified by the UUID. However, if the mobile device P1 remains in passive mode, it will not be able to react to additional transmissions of the beacon signal BA from the active mobile device A1 for the reasons explained above. The passive mobile device P1 will therefore not be reactive to additional transmissions of the beacon signal BA from the active mobile device A1 during the “deafened out” state.
This problematic situation is complicated further by the fact that in a bubble system, all active mobile devices are potential senders as well as receivers of beacon signals. For instance, the other active mobile devices A2, A3 and A4 may also send respective beacon advertisement signals to generate a respective bubble (dynamic ad-hoc network) of nearby mobile devices within their respective proximity zones. These transmissions typically use the same common UUID, wherein the transmissions are individualized by including a respective device identifier within the 32-bit major/minor portion of the respective beacon signal.
While the active mobile devices A1, A2 and A3 (for example) may react to the beacon advertisement signal and hence join the bubble of the active mobile device A4 (for example), this is not so for the passive mobile device P1 if it has already have detected the beacon advertisement signal of the first active mobile device A1 (for example) and thus been deafened out.
A problem from the point of view of the passive mobile device P1 is that it will not have any opportunity to hear the beacon advertisement signals as identified by the common UUID and as a result not be given any opportunity to join other bubbles than the bubble of the first active mobile device A1 (for example). A problem from the point of view of the active mobile devices A2, A3 and A4 is correspondingly that they will not be aware of the presence of the passive mobile device P1 within their respective proximity zones, nor be able to announce their availability as bubble creators to the passive mobile device P1.
As is clear from the above description, the present inventors have identified several problems with beacon communications systems of the prior art. In addition to the observations above, the present inventors have also identified a need for improved triggering of beacon receiver devices in beacon communications systems to cause an individual beacon receiver device or a group of beacon receiver devices to perform an action.